wonder if the world ever will recover
by emptysummer
Summary: Angels and men and monsters. They fought and bled and loved and danced and the world ended that much sooner. An anthology of drabbles based on prompt table fills.


Angels and men and monsters. They fought and bled and loved and danced and the world ended that much sooner. An anthology of drabbles based on prompt table fills.

Title from the Hold Steady song _cattle and the creeping things. _The quote goes like this "she likes the part where one brother kills the other/she has to wonder if the the world ever will recover/because Cain and Abel seem to still be causing trouble_" _It's a lovely song and the analysis of original sin "I heard the dude blamed the chick/ I heard the chick blamed the snake/ I heard they were naked when they got busted/ and I heard things ain't been the same since" just makes me laugh.

Gaimen's _Murder Mysteries _had a major influence on both Fall and Push.

* * *

037. Fall. Michael and Lucifer at the beginning of time. 301 words.

He (God is a human concept and the word will not come about for a time yet) is raging over the betrayal of Lucifer. And Lucifer will not kneel. This Michael knows. Your Father's heavenly host sprawled out behind you and your brother has lost his rebellion. You hold out your hand, ask him to repent. He will not. Lucifer was the brightest of all of your Father's angels, the Morning Star, the light-bearer. He does not know how to alter his course. (Neither do you.) You know this but for a moment you allow yourself to hope.

This is your sin. You let yourself hope and the feeling sinks into your skin. Angels were never meant to _feel_.

You hope and your brother is proud. Together you are defective, imperfect in your Father's eyes.

You hope and your brother is proud and golden. Lucifer is defeated but from his view he has not committed a crime for loving your Father most of all. Again you ask him to repent fully prepared to do your duty should he refuse. Your heart is heavy with the knowledge that he will refuse your Father's forgiveness. It is not murder, not yet.

Your brother spares you this duty. He smiles at you, golden, burning with something you cannot understand and closes his wings with a snap and _falls_.Like a comet to the Earth, your brother burns.

Heartbreak has not been designed yet. So you stand on the edge of the clouds and watch Lucifer fall (he will not be golden by the time he reaches the end) as the host dissipates and your Father's rage turns to grief for his brightest son and wish that you knew nothing of emotion as your Father wanted for you.

Your brother fell. And you did nothing.

* * *

018. Push. Lucifer on falling from Grace. 220 words.

They say he fell, with regret in their eyes.

Humans speak of him in whispers, a grand rebellion against the Creator, of reigning in hell and how it is better then serving in Heaven. They say he was glorious, the brightest of all God's angels. They say he served. But mostly they speak of how he fell.

This is a lie. Lucifer was pushed.

His Father (Lucifer still calls him that with reverent undertones even after millennia trapped in his cage) designed him to question. And Lucifer questioned. Questioned God and his purpose and the apes that His Father created and then told his angels to love them above their Father.

Lucifer questioned. The he doubted, not His Father's wisdom but his creation and the order to revere humans above Him. And with doubt came humanity. He found free will, and the uncertainty of choice. He finds hate. None of his brothers has ever questioned His design.

A secret? Lucifer was designed to fall, as Michael was designed to mourn and Gabriel to leave.

He was a warning and a choice. The epitome of the mistakes God wrote into humans. Is it any wonder he hates them?

He is (_will be, was) _free will. And he is screaming for his Father's forgiveness still, long after the end of the world.

083. Angels. Castiel and humanity. 401 words

Castiel spends the first three million years of his existence watching. From the edge of Heaven he observes compassion, love, hope, anger, guilt_. _He observes humans tears and laughter and watches them bleed for nothing at all. He observes.

He does not understand.

He does not understands why any of his brothers and sisters would fall for the sake of emotion and the short ugly lives humans live.

(They say his favorite place to watch is the place where Michael once stood to watch the Morning Star fall. There is a warning in the words.)

Heaven buzzes with the news of the vessels being born and Castiel feels the weight of what is written on his shoulders everyday. The end of the world is nigh and God is absent.

When his superiors tell him to save Dean Winchester from Hell, he does so one of hundreds to try because Dean Winchester is significant. He is human. Flawed but when you take his soul in your hands and raise him from perdition you feel awe. Perhaps there is something to these creatures beside your Father's favor.

He calls you Cas. And drags you around with him. As you grow weaker the Winchesters grow stronger. This is written.

Perhaps this too is written. When Dean slings an arm around you, you smile pulling on Jimmy Novak's memories of how to make the muscles move. It feels uncomfortable on your borrowed face. When you and Sam trade lore and legend, he offers you little bits of humanity (_anger and faith and love_) in exchange for what must be, to a human, an eternity of stories. Sam teaches you contractions and Dean teaches you to swear and somewhere in between you think _I can save them_ and realize there are emotions attached to the thought (_grief and wonder and hope_).

When you realize the angels also seek to release Lucifer you feel the changes they have wrought in you. You are angry (because god is gone and Dean and Sam are broken and the world is only worth saving because of two children screaming to the night that they can change the world).

This is when you Fall.

You do not regret anything.

You understand best of all His children. He gave you free will so you could hang yourselves. With Dean to your right and Sam to your left you don't mind one bit.

* * *

One through three of a hundred. I'll post every time I have three or five


End file.
